Beijing urged to come clean on pollution

By Jacquelin Magnay

November 20, 2007 — 11.00am

THE International Olympic Committee has called on Beijing Games organisers to release detailed information about air quality gathered during an August trial when 1.3million cars were taken off the Chinese capital's roads.

A doctor on the IOC medical commission, Ken Fitch, said the IOC wanted to see the data from the trial, which was conducted 12 months before the Beijing Olympics.

Fitch questioned statements from Beijing organisers that the trial had showed air pollution in the smog-riddled city had decreased by up to 20 per cent.

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Fitch told an Australian Olympic Committee athlete health and medical forum in Sydney yesterday that incomplete study figures the IOC had obtained showed the pollution levels had not changed during the trial.

He said Beijing officials had kept key data to themselves, such as the weather conditions at the time, the hourly recordings and the information from 17 other sites. IOC president Jacques Rogge has previously announced that he would consider changing the times of some events to work around high pollution levels.

Fitch said: "The health of the athlete is paramount, that is why we are looking at the air quality situation, we don't want athletes to have consequences from participating in the Beijing Olympic Games."

"They [the sites] all had bad days; hockey seemed the worst and the rowing venue the best ... but I know when Mexico City gives its pollution report it gives the 4am report because that is the best hour of the day. We need to know the Beijing data during the day when the athletes will be competing , the data from the other 17 sites, the location of the testing and we need the weather to correlate what was going on at the time, otherwise the testing is meaningless."

Fitch, and newly elected World Anti-Doping Agency vice-president Arne Ljungqvist, will meet Beijing officials next week in Monaco over the issue.

Fitch said he expected the Beijing organisers would do everything they could to ensure the Beijing Games were not seen through a pollution haze.

The organisers have agreed to to cease construction, reduce power generation by 30 per cent and get 70 per cent of the cars off the road during the Games fortnight.